EDITORIAL: $500,000 raise after one year? Not bad for a state employee

Ole Miss head football coach Hugh Freeze just got a raise - $500,000 extra per year in pay, to be exact. That brings coach Freeze's annually base pay to $2 million per year, or $500,000 more than he began with as a new hire last year.

Not a bad pay increase - half a million bucks - after just one year.

Every state employee that performs well should be so lucky.

Already, Freeze earned more than $300,000 in bonus pay this season for three Southeastern Conference wins - $100,000 per win - and a bowl game appearance. The bonus structure Ole Miss set up, paying first-year coach Freeze more for wins was smart, especially considering former Rebel coach Houston Nutt earned $2.8 million in his final year and he ended with 14 straight SEC losses.

Not exactly a good return on investment for the university.

But this question is not about the value of Freeze, who appears to be an excellent hire by Ole Miss. Freeze arrived in Oxford with organization, he has raised morale, and he won more games in his first season than anybody expected. Freeze is even said to be a strong recruiter.

So Ole Miss' investment in Freeze comparatively speaking against Nutt's former contract and against fellow SEC schools seems to be a good one. On those merits, there are no complaints.

The question here is about what appears to be a college football coaching salary bubble that this one story involving Freeze is indicative of simply because it is the one before us at the moment. Football, of course, is a revenue machine for schools in the biggest conferences. No argument there.

But the argument is made that to keep good coaches, universities have to pay these exorbitant salaries and give our exorbitant pay raises each year they win a few games. The reality, however, tells a very different story. Most good coaches eventually leave once they are ready, and the money gets high enough elsewhere, regardless.

Call it the Tommy Tuberville syndrome. One moment, the former Ole Miss coach was reportedly dining with recruits for Texas Tech, his employer at the time. Moments later, Tuberville got a job offer apparently including a pay raise to coach at Cincinnati. He was reportedly out the door, without finishing dinner or saying goodbye to the Texas Tech recruits, and on his way to coach the Bearcats.

It was just last year that Tuberville received a $500,000 per-year pay raise at Texas Tech with a contract extended through 2015 for a total of $2 million per year. That Texas Tech pay increase came despite a mediocre career record and in a year that Texas Tech faculty was asked to take a pay freeze.

Ole Miss fans can rest easy if they are reading any comparisons here between Tuberville and the Freeze. That's not the case. Freeze has proven, so far, to be an excellent Division 1 college coach.

It's just a matter of $500,000 pay raises after just one year that's in question. Would Freeze have left Ole Miss next month, had he not received the big bonus check he earned, a pat on the back and a 10 percent pay raise?

Doubtful.

Had Ole Miss been more inspired to focus on wins, above all, the university simply could have doubled the bonus Freeze gets per SEC win to $200,000 per game. Then, the school would be assured a return on its investment and Freeze, with a $1.5 million base, would remain a well-paid Mississippian.

It's just time that university leaders charged with teaching tomorrow's generation starts to think about the games that are being played these days with coaching salaries. Somewhere, at some point, some SEC school is going to have to draw the line.